Bewitch Me
by OkThat'sCool
Summary: Do you believe in magic?
1. Prologue

_**Bewitch Me**_

_Prologue_

In the small town of Craeton, it is a truth universally acknowledged by all its citizens that the fastest way to bring misery to yourself and all those around you is to marry a Wincombe girl.

As one of the five still existing founding families, the Wincombes were shrouded in mystery since Henry Croyle set foot on the soil of the New World and declared the, now almost three-hundred-year-old, town home. The first and only Wincombe male—Gregory Wincombe—in the town never actually made it there. He died on the crossing from England at the ripe old age of 26 leaving behind a wife—Mariella Wincombe—and a one-year-old daughter, Hope. Technically the Wincombe line died then and there with no male heirs to pass on the family name.

And yet the name survived.

Mariella, it was hypothesized once her husband took his last breath, would never make it through the first winter. As the ship set down and Henry Croyle led the other passengers off the boat and onto the soil of their new home for the first time, debates raged amongst the women as to who would take charity on the raven-haired, silent woman and her child. Which wife would let the pair into her future home? Which husband would take on two extra mouths to feed?

But Mariella, like all other Wincombe women after her when faced with adversity, waded through the shallow shore of the Atlantic Ocean and stepped foot onto dry soil with her baby on her hip, her head held high, and a twinkle in her eye. She breezed past the teetering wives, past the gawking husbands, and set off in search of a piece of land to call her own. The land she chose was not by any means prime real estate and the men of town mocked her choice to build a home nearly a mile from the center of town on a piece of land almost entirely engulfed in a swamp. The women asked her why she'd chosen it. But Mariella just smiled with that twinkle in her eye and replied, "I had a feeling."

The first few weeks were miserable, as Mariella left her precious daughter in the hands of the trustworthy preacher's wife, a one Elizabeth Whitling, and set off to build herself a home. No one knew how exactly, perhaps with the helping hand of frequent visits from the generous Mr. Croyle, but somehow, someway, the house was built. And perhaps it was the protection of the trees that removed the house from the gusts of freezing winds or the heat rising off the swampy waters, but somehow, someway, Mariella and her daughter both survived the frigid winter.

It baffled everyone as to how a tiny woman could manage to accomplish with a skill almost bordering on ease what most men of town could scarcely manage. That was how the rumors began.

The first was perpetuated by the good-natured Elizabeth Whitling, that Mariella accomplished what she did by the grace of God. The rest weren't nearly as nice. Kathryn White claimed it was the work of the devil; that Mariella had sold her soul for the ability to save her own and her child's lives. But most slanderous of all, Emma Blair said it was the work of Henry Croyle himself, whom, it was rumored, was more than happy to keep Mariella warm on those cold, cold nights. Most chose to believe the latter, including Henry Croyle's wife, Francesca, who was of superior birth and therefore highly respected by all the other ladies of town.

Needless to say, Mariella was not well liked. Only the Whitlings', who chose to believe the good in all, would even speak to her in town. Yet, despite it all, Henry Croyle still made his weekly trip to the swamp with supplies for Mariella Wincombe and her daughter. And the rumors raged on.

With each week, folks grew more and more positive that Henry was having an affair with Mariella. Only the respect the townspeople had for Francesca's superior breeding kept the Croyle name from slander, and yet, just when it felt like Francesca was finally losing control of her husband, just when his weekly trips grew in frequency until they became daily trips, Henry Croyle died of the most unnatural and inexplicable causes.

Fingers were pointed directly at Mariella concerning Henry's mysterious death, Francesca officially renounced her name in public, and she was shunned from Craeton society for good.

For Mariella Wincombe, like all her descendants thereafter, was a witch.


	2. Chapter 1

Here's chapter 1. Just to make things clear, the name Eyda is pronounced like Eye-duh. Not Ay-duh. Hope you guys enjoy!

:)

* * *

_Bewitch Me_

"_You have bewitched me, body and soul."_

_Chapter 1_

Eyda Blair decided when she was seven years old that she no longer believed in magic.

She remembered the moment as if it happened yesterday, an ultraviolent image ingrained in her conscience. She'd stood at the foot of her father's grave, her hand clasped tightly with each of her two sisters. June to her left, holding tightly to the weathered hand of their grandmother, Solaris Kent; Lyla to her right, clasping tightly to the chiffon, black skirt of their mother, Brayden Blair. Tears rained down her mother's cheeks, falling freely onto the muddy ground and disappearing in a wisp of sizzling smoke.

"Eyda? Eyda? You there, hon?"

Eyda opened her eyes slowly and peered up at her older sister, June, who blinked back at her with a sad frown. Eyda lifted her chin from the heel of her hand and wiped her stinging eyes.

"Was it a bad one?" June asked.

"Dad's funeral."

"I'm sorry."

Eyda busied herself quickly, checking her face briefly in the mirror behind the ingredient shelf and wiping the smeared mascara from beneath her eyes. She grabbed her nearly unnaturally long, dark curls into a fist and knotted them atop her head while June rounded the table and placed a comforting hand on her sister's shoulder.

"I know they're hard on you."

"Only because I wish I could make them go away," she snapped at her gentle sister.

"If you'd just embrace them maybe you'd have more control," June prodded, smiling sweetly in the face of her sister's distemper and running her hand smoothly across her shoulders. She took a deep breath, her exhale whispering softly against her perfectly pink lips and in an instant Eyda felt the weight lift off her shoulders, her frustrations flutter away, and the pain in her heart trickled through her body and into the floor of the family's glittering and eclectic display room. "Better?" June asked, opening her eyes and smiling hopefully at her sister.

Eyda laughed softly and couldn't help but smile back at her sister. "You're good."

June beamed and twirled away from her, her skirt flying in wisps of color, her blond curls dancing around her rosy cheeks. "No, I'm a Wincombe," she giggled, still twirling in circles in the middle of the room. Her childish dance was interrupted only when she stumbled slightly knocking into a glass shelf and causing a large vial to fall to the floor and shatter. June merely giggled at her own clumsiness and bent over to gather the glass.

"Nice one," Eyda pointed out, leaning back over the counter and jamming her chin right back onto the heel of her hand, her elbow resting snugly on the counter.

"What'd you break?" a panting, fiery redheaded asked breathlessly as she came rushing from the adjacent and pungent brewing room. "Please tell me it wasn't the Wild Rose. That took me seven months to brew."

June just smiled up at her youngest sister, Lyla, and giggled again before continuing to gather the miniscule glass shards.

"Relax, Lyl. It's just Ritual Water," Eyda replied, her voice muffled by the palm of her hand.

"Good. Instant secrecy is a big seller, June. We can't afford to break it," Lyla replied, still eyeing June slightly angrily. June's rampant clumsiness was commonly an issue between the oldest and youngest sisters. June had broken some of Lyla's most interesting concoctions and ruined some of her best spells. "People in this town have plenty to hide."

"I wish I could hide your hideous face," Eyda growled sarcastically to her younger sister who replied with an equally sarcastic laugh while June giggled genuinely.

"It's not funny!" Lyla squealed, quickly turning to the closest mirror to observe her own reflection. Lyla was infamous amongst her sisters for her unadulterated praise of her perfect button nose, peppered with a adorable dash of scattered freckles, her fiery mane of red hair, and her eyes of such a delicate brown they were practically gold. She nurtured her vanity, priding herself on her utter lack of insecurities, and commonly spending hours each day on her own personal beauty routine. She practically supported her entire family by revolutionizing her great-great-great-grandmother's potion store (which belonged to every generation of Wincombe women thereafter) with her clever brewing and bottling of simple beauty tonics (and other less conventional products) for women. She took their profits even further by selling some of her more harmless beauty potions online. For her sister to insult her look, well, that was like insulting her entire being!

"Lyla!" June rushed over to her youngest sister, still giggling at the absurdity of Lyla's affront while Lyla anxiously examined her every pore in the mirror searching desperately for a flaw to be rectified, and enveloping her in a gentle hug. "You know you're the most beautiful girl in town," she sighed, and exhaled a soft word into her sister's ear that magically reduced Lyla's fears ten-fold. "See what you've done?" she said, shooting Eyda a glare over Lyla's shoulder and silently chastising her for her insult.

"I am," Lyla replied, pulling out of June's arms and raking her hand through her perfectly bouncy hair with a wobbly smile. "I am the most beautiful girl in town."

Eyda snorted into her palm, still jammed beneath her chin, supporting her entire head. "Yes and you have the most _beautiful _soul to match," she continued to mock, completely unperturbed by one sister's distress and the other's glares.

"Lyla! The potion!" their grandmother's voice rang through the house, floating down to the girls in the empty shop in the first floor of the old Wincombe mansion all the way from the fourth floor, where Solaris Kent sat in her favorite rocking chair tingling with the sensation of emotions that didn't belong to her. Knowing, without ever having been told, that Lyla's potion was in need of stirring in her own mysterious way.

"Oh right!" Lyla jumped, checking herself out in the mirror one final time before rushing back to her brewing room.

The empty store sat in silence in the wake of Lyla's departure. The glittering glass fixtures and shelves fragmenting light into a prismatic dance of colors all around the fresh, white room. Multiple mirrors scattered throughout the room reflected the glowing vials of potions and bouquets of pungent herbs scattered throughout the room and the frowning, darkened image of Eyda Blair.

"Cheer up! _Please_," the equally luminescent June pleaded with her troubled sister. Unlike Eyda, June didn't darken the doorways of the shop—although June couldn't darken a doorway even if she tried—but rather added to the cheery and glittering warmth of the room.

"I'm sorry," Eyda replied, suddenly snapping out of her mood either on her own volition or with the help of her sister's magical support, and finally yanking her chin out of her palm. She shook her head and forced a grin before tugging a ringlet of curls from her ponytail, twirling it around her finger and setting off in to a contemplative silence.

June merely observed. She watched her sister's brow crease, her bottom lip protrude slightly, and felt the emotional force of the room darken once again as Eyda slipped into reverie. Oh what she would give to make her sister feel better! She wished with all her might that her powers were stronger, that she could fully lift the burden of Eyda's darkened emotions from her shoulders and make her smile.

"What's wrong, Eyda?" she pleaded unable to stand the force of Eyda's heavy emotions hanging in the room like a fog.

"Huh?" Eyda snapped out of it quickly and immediately stopped twirling her strand of hair. "Did you say something?"

"What's going on with you?"

Eyda shrugged and stood from her stool. She quickly began to busy herself with shuffling papers full of her nonchalant doodles around the counter and avoiding eye contact with June.

"Eyda, please," June continued undeterred. "Whatever you feel, I feel too. Just tell me what it is."

Eyda stopped and fell back heavily onto her stool. She stared at her doodles, examining the curving, twisting lines chaotically strewn across the paper for an agonizingly long moment before looking up to make eye-contact with her sister.

"I just have this feeling," she began, feeling stupid, but powering on with the help of June's magical, emotional encouragement. "This lingering feeling of dread. Like something terrible is about to happen." She quickly broke eye contact with June, her face coloring a deep crimson. "It's stupid…"

June took a deep breath. "No it's not. Like Grammy always says: Always trust your feelings."

"I don't know. This one is strange though, Juney," Eyda contradicted, still chocked full of doubt. "It's like that feeling you get when you've lost something and you _know_ you've lost something, but you can't remember what it is that you've supposedly lost."

"Aw, Eyd. I'm sure it'll be—"

"Girls! Could you help me in the kitchen!" Their mother's voice echoed through the house interrupting June's statement.

"I'm in the middle of something!" They heard Lyla shout from the opposite side of the house.

"Now!" came their mother's reply as June and Eyda ignored the shouting exchange as if it were a nightly routine and began to gather their wits.

"Goddamnit, Mom!" they heard Lyla exclaim as they strode down the hall, their feet clunking on the worn, wooden floor.

"I heard that!" Brayden shouted back to Lyla as June and Eyda entered the kitchen, catching their mother mid-scream and not even blinking an eye at the volume of her exchange with their youngest sister.

"Gosh, you're so demanding," Lyla pouted at a softer volume as she came stomping into the kitchen with a petulant frown. "If I mess up this potion—"

"Yeah, yeah. You'll turn me into a toad," Brayden argued with a smile on her face, laughing at her youngest daughter's never-ceasing childish antics despite her 21 years of "wisdom". "I've heard it all before, Lyla. Now," she spun around the kitchen with practiced ease and plopped a stack of plates and silverware into Lyla awaiting hands, "go set the table."

"But this one's important!" Lyla protested. "I've never brewed anything this difficult before and if I don't stir the cauldron in exactly one minute and 34 seconds it will—"

"Well then I suggest you set it fast," Brayden interrupted, turning and pointing her finger in the direction of the dining room with a sturdy note of finality.

"Ugh. Fine," Lyla pouted angrily, stomping back out of the room through the door Brayden had pointed to.

"And no magic!" Brayden shouted after her. "Those are your great-great grandmother's plates and I will poison your food if you break anything!"

The only response was the angry thump of glass against the wooden table in the next room over.

"That girl…" Brayden sighed, taking a deep breath and bringing the pot of soup on the counter to a boil without the help of a stove. She held her hand above the liquid and stirred the pot's boiling contents with a circular motion of her wrist.

"She's just trying to help," June protested sweetly as her mother continued to stir the pot without any physical contact with its contents.

"Help herself maybe," Eyda grunted, grabbing a knife and chopping the vegetables June tossed to her from the basket across the room.

June opened her mouth to clarify, stopped, and took a deep breath.

Eyda frowned into her vegetables, and Brayden stopped twirling her hand as she studied June's nervous countenance.

"What are you and Lyla up to?" Brayden asked, studying June closely, her soup ceasing to boil as her focus drifted elsewhere.

"N-nothing?"

A final thump of glass from the dining room and the loud tread of Lyla saved June from further questions as Lyla stomped back into the kitchen. "Can I go now?" she asked over the steady whacking of Eyda's vegetable chopping, glaring at her mother.

Brayden nodded to Lyla without looking away from June.

"Great thanks," Lyla replied, falsely relieved, and suddenly shuffling from foot-to-foot impatiently. "Gotta run!" she quickly began to exit the kitchen only stopping briefly to call back into the room, "June! Aren't you coming?" before finally making her departure.

June shuffled under her mother's penetrating gaze, smiled weakly and slipped out of the room.

"What do you think they're up to?" Brayden asked her last remaining daughter while jamming her hand onto her hip.

Eyda didn't look up from her vegetables, still chopping away at the same steady pace. "I try not to get into these things, mother," she replied drolly. "It normally ends badly."

* * *

James Emerson paced across his bedroom 17 times before finally coming to a halt. He stopped, mid-pivot, mid-thought, mid-rake-of-hand-through-hair. Mid-everything! He just stopped functioning. His mind went entirely blank.

And then suddenly he had an urge. An urge to do what exactly? He didn't know. But something. There was something he wanted to do very much indeed. And just when he felt like the idea was on the tip of his tongue—

The phone rang.

James frowned into the depths of his room. Surely his phone was somewhere. He just couldn't quite remember where.

Oh. His desk! He quickly crossed the room for the 18th time and searched through the myriad of papers scattered across his desk. His phone was not under an article about Druid mythology. It was not beside the book on the Salem Witch Trails. It was not even nestled between the pages of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible." So where was it? He continued to search. Eventually he located the ringing object in question sitting patiently behind his laptop. He snatched it up and frowned at the little glowing screen displaying the almost long forgotten name of Camden Croyle.

That was strange…

James was suddenly seeing with startling clarity. It was like he could watch his life spread out before him in two diverging paths. He could answer the phone. Or he could not. But a force greater than his own puny, little mind gripped him and before he knew it he'd accepted the mysterious call from his long-lost friend.

"Hello?" he asked into the tiny device, still puzzling out the choice that he'd made without ever actually having made it.

"James Emerson."

"Camden Croyle. What a strange surprise."

The voice on the other end of the line laughed a hearty response. "I know. It's kind of strange, isn't it? What's it been? Three years?"

"Five," James replied.

"Five? God. Am I really getting that old? We graduated _five_ whole years ago?"

"Just about. Yes."

"And you're a wildly successful writer. And what have I accomplished with my life? I'm…"

"You're?" James prodded, smiling at his old college buddy's ability to remain exactly the same over the years. Still trailing off mid-sentence; always distracted by bigger and better things.

"I'm… back home. Taking care of my grandmother," he replied with a certain note of derision.

"There are worse things to be doing," James supplied encouragingly thinking about his own predicament.

"Yeah. It's just strange to be running the old family business. I feel like I should start wearing sweater vests and smoking tobacco out of a pipe. It's all a very strange feeling. I have a lot of time to think out here. It's pretty quiet, y'know?"

"Yeah. Silence can be deafening." He sat down at his desk and opened his laptop, staring sadly at his still decidedly blank word document, watching the curser blink at him just waiting for him to find the right words—although at this point _any_ words would do—to write down.

"Which brings me to why I called…"

"Which would be?" James prodded again.

"Well I was just sitting there doing the Sudoku in last Sunday's newspaper after I finished dinner when suddenly you popped into my mind and I thought, 'Gosh, I hope he's not dead somewhere.' And then I had the sudden urge to just call you up and see how you're doing. And so I did. Kind of odd, huh?"

James frowned and breathed into the phone in silence for a solid minute before he finally spoke. "No, it's not odd. I had something similar happen. I was actually just sitting here, attempting to do some writing, when all of a sudden your name popped into my head. And then the phone rang and it was you."

"I take my statement back. _That_ is truly odd."

"Almost takes coincidence to a whole new level."

"Yeah. I'd say serendipitous if I didn't know better…" The conversation fizzled as both men contemplated the emotions that had wrangled them into this exchange. Both found their thoughts too strange—to out of nowhere—to carry on contemplating them. Luckily, Camden changed the subject. "So, how goes the writing, Mr. Pulitzer Prize Winner? Got another 100 million copies up your sleeve? A couple more best-sellers?"

James chuckled. "No. Not exactly."

"Well, I might have an idea for assistance…"

James had another staring contest with the winking cursor of his blank document before his screen fell asleep and blacked out. "What did you have in mind?"


End file.
